Hot Topics:

GUEST COLUMN: New 'growth model' hurts needy students

Sentinel & Enterprise

Updated:
07/05/2014 06:34:12 AM EDT

By Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass

Guest Columnists

In the waning days of the school year, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education ensured that fewer urban schoolchildren will have high-quality learning opportunities come September. The board unanimously adopted a proposal from Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester that manipulates numbers and makes a mockery of the goal of rewarding improved performance.

And, yes, politics is at the heart of the move.

Under state law, the percentage of students who can attend charter schools is twice as high in school districts that perform in the bottom 10 percent statewide than it is in other districts. Until recently, performance was measured by scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). But a recent vote changed the measure to add "growth," or a district's rate of improvement, to the determination of that bottom-performing category.

As a result, five cities, including Worcester, Lowell and Brockton, which on average have significantly fewer than half their students performing in proficient and advanced categories, are magically no longer considered at the bottom. They will be replaced by the likes of Hawleymont, with a total enrollment of 98. The districts exiting the bottom 10 percent enroll about 68,000 students; those entering have 8,000.

Advertisement

The Department of Elementary and Secondary education's "growth model" will now account for one-quarter of the determination of district performance. The problem is that the model rewards districts for growth in student performance that is all but imperceptible.

In Brockton, the percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on MCAS went from 42 percent to 43 percent between 2011 and 2013. Worcester "grew" from 45 to 46 percent.

The victims of the change are needy students in schools that are failing and unlikely to improve any time soon. Those students will now be deprived of the opportunity to attend a high-quality charter school.

If you doubt that, just take a look at the demographics. Instead of nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of students being African-American or Hispanic in the exiting districts, there are 18 percent in the districts taking their place. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of students in the school districts exiting the bottom 10 percent are low income compared to just 45 percent in districts that will take their places. Low-income students in the commonwealth's charter schools came within two points of closing the entire 20-point wealth-based achievement gap on 2013 MCAS tests. In 2012, 20 charter schools, including many urban charters, finished first in Massachusetts on various tests. Many inner-city charters outperform even affluent suburban schools.

A 2013 Stanford University study found that Massachusetts has the nation's best charter schools. Charter students gain an additional month and a half of learning in English and 2 1/2 months in math each year compared with the commonwealth's traditional public schools.

A 2009 report from the Boston Foundation found that Boston charter schools dramatically outperformed both district and pilot schools (semi-autonomous district schools created in response to charters). It found that the academic impact from a year spent in a Boston charter was comparable to that of a year in one of the city's elite exam schools and, in middle school math, equivalent to one-half of the achievement gap between black and white students.

Yet the board's decision radically reduces the number of students who will have access to charters. Students were reportedly the pawns in an effort by Commissioner Chester to ingratiate himself to school districts that detest competition from charter schools and get more of them to forgo MCAS and administer tests linked to new national academic standards known as Common Core.

Chester leads the Partnership for Readiness in College and Careers (PARCC), one of the two consortia developing assessments linked to Common Core. His problem is that no one is following. The consortium began with 25 states and is now down to nine; even more hemorrhaging is likely.

It's unlikely that Chester's machinations will avert PARCC's ultimate demise. It's incomprehensible that Chester, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the administration of Gov. Deval Patrick, which they both serve, would sell thousands of children down the river in an effort to prop it up. Charles Chieppo is a senior fellow of and Jamie Gass directs the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sentinel and Enterprise. So keep it civil.